


The Other Explanation

by thedevilchicken



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8237881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Bruce doesn't believe in fate.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TKodami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami/gifts).



> AU where there's no fire to deal with and so Clark doesn't wander off when he follows Bruce down to the server room. Bruce is left trying to explain what exactly he's doing there.

Bruce doesn’t believe in fate. 

Bruce believes in coincidence, and logic, and the fact that correlation doesn’t automatically mean causation. He believes in science and fact and that if you can't find the answer, you're just not looking for it hard or smart enough. He believes things happen without a reason; he believes things happen because people make them happen. Bruce believes predestination is a myth.

And, looking back, how they met wasn't fate. How they met was basically absurd, though Bruce would have used a stronger term at the time. 

Over the years, Bruce has found himself in some totally ridiculous situations. Some of them he’s put himself into entirely on purpose and some of them have been just the unhappy kind of accident. Most of them have worked out well, for certain values of _well_ on the sliding scale. Some of them have ended poorly, like the time the doctors said he'd never walk again, but here he is, walking again. Some of them, he’s almost died. He’s still not sure which particular category it is that night falls into. 

He was in the server room. Perhaps he didn’t know precisely what he was looking for but he’d worked with less before and, where Lex was concerned, it really could’ve been anything from soft-core pornography to a doomsday device. He’d never been entirely impressed with Lex Luthor, unless you took that to mean that he made an impression. Lex has always made an impression. Where most people are concerned, that impression’s not necessary good.

He was in the server room and he knew he shouldn’t have been there, technically speaking. He’s been a lot of places he shouldn’t’ve been over the years, from server rooms just like Lex’s was to bank vaults to evidence rooms to farmland and funerals in Nowhere, Kansas, and he’s usually gotten himself out unscathed. He’s just had to do a few less-than-legal, morally dubious things to salvage the situation, every now and then. He tends to think that there are few situations where the ends don't justify the means.

The thing was, if he’d had to write out a list of all the guests present at Lex’s party and rank them all in order, from most likely to least in terms of finding him out, in terms of screwing up his plans, the reporter from the Planet would’ve been right down near the end. Not right at the end, definitely not last, because after all he was a newspaperman with an inquisitive head on his shoulders, but he’d’ve been close down to it because it was clear that he was there for Lex, just like the majority of them all were, and not for him. 

But then the server room door swung open and Bruce turned back around, expecting to see a security guard, expecting Mercy, expecting a beautiful woman in a cocktail dress with a cocktail in her hand, and there was the reporter instead, there was Clark Kent. Bruce raised his brows. 

“Are you lost, Mr. Kent?” Bruce asked. 

“Are _you_ , Mr. Wayne?” Clark replied. 

“Are you looking for a quote?”

“Are you looking for a server?”

“Maybe I’m looking for a bathroom.” 

Clark glanced from side to side, at the banks of equipment in its glass-fronted cases. “This doesn’t look much like a bathroom,” he said.

“So I guess I took a wrong turn.” Bruce shrugged expansively, a smile on his face that he'd worked hard over the years to make seem genuine. “I guess I drank too much for one of Lex’s parties." His smile widened. "I guess I _had_ to drink to much to _be_ at one of Lex’s parties.” 

Clark shook his head slowly. Clark crossed his arms over his chest. “I still don’t think that’s why you’re down here, Mr. Wayne.” 

“So why am I?” Bruce asked. He tucked his hands into his pockets to keep from slipping into a more defensive stance and leaned his shoulder against the nearest glass-fronted server cabinet. “Why don't you dazzle me with your investigative journalism.”

Clark paused. Clark's eyes narrowed. “I think you want something.” 

Bruce raised his brows, ostensibly amused. “Mr. Kent, I _always_ want something.”

“I think you want something in this room.”

And in Bruce’s ear, Alfred said, “He’s getting too close. Please shake him off.”

“Oh?” Bruce said, to Clark and also Alfred. 

“Do I have to think of everything?” Alfred said, faintly amused. “Use your imagination.”

“I think you’re hiding something,” Clark said, still frowning, perhaps a fraction harder. 

_Imagination_ , Alfred said, and Bruce has never lacked imagination. Part of why he'd been so successful, part of why he still is, is his ability to think creatively, to solve the problems few others can, and not just by virtue of his bank account; he analyzes situations rapidly and evaluates resulting options from right across the spectrum, from the mundate right up to the ridiculous, and chooses the best to suit the situation, and that's what he did right then. He had a plan. A ridiculous plan, but it was still a plan.

He tilted his head and he looked Clark Kent up and down there in his cheap suit over his bulky frame and he made himself notice him, made himself _notice_ him, his broad shoulders, his slim waist, not that it took a great expense of effort. He'd seen him, of course, a couple of glances to catalogue the look of him just in case, height and build and the cut of his cheekbones, the set of his jaw. But this time he did it slowly, did it the way he'd had to work at to perfect; he did it obviously, he did it with a faint little smile on his face, and then he raised his brows. Clark swallowed. At that point, maybe Bruce still thought it was verging on funny, or that it would've been to anyone but him. Maybe he thought it was almost a joke.

“Did you think I didn’t know you were following me, Mr. Kent?” Bruce said. 

“I...” Clark replied. 

“Did you think I didn’t know you’d been watching me?” Bruce said.

“That’s not...” Clark replied. 

“Do you think I believe you don’t know my reputation?” Bruce said.

“But...” Clark replied. 

Bruce smiled languidly. Bruce pushed himself away from the cabinet and he took a couple of slow steps forward. Bruce’s pulse was picking up and it was just like Clark could hear that, and though he didn't know it then, Bruce knows now that he could. He ran both hands down Clark’s jacket lapels, curled his fingers in under them, held him there by them or would have done had Clark tried to move at all. He stepped closer, Alfred snickering lowly in his ear, and when it looked like Clark might bolt for the door at any second, that was when Bruce kissed him. That was when he pushed Clark up against the nearest cabinet door, got his fingers in his hair and kissed him on the mouth with his body pressed in tight against him. 

“Well now, _this_ I didn’t expect,” Alfred said when Bruce pulled back. 

“Mr. Wayne, I think you’ve...” Clark said when Bruce pulled back. 

But then Bruce kissed him again and swallowed up that thought entirely. The next time he pulled back, Clark was blushing the shade of Superman’s cape, agape, and Bruce smiled a not-quite-rakish smile and took Clark by the hands and, after the first moment of surprise, Clark went with him when he tugged. Clark went with him down the aisle and round the corner, away from the door, away from the cameras, and Bruce was surprised, genuinely _surprised_ at that, that he didn't run, and it wasn't just the reporter in him going for the story. And when they were out of sight, Clark let him push him up against the glass and let him kiss him again. That was another surprise. He'd expected him to run for the hills. Apparently, he'd miscalculated, but he could adapt.

“Still think I want something in this room, Mr. Kent?” Bruce said, lowly, right by Clark’s ear. The heat was practically rolling off him, making sweat prickle at Bruce's neck, below his collar.

Clark nodded. “I’m sure of it,” he said, but his fingers had clenched into fists at the back of Bruce’s jacket by the time Bruce’s mouth found the side of his neck, above his collar. 

“I’ll give you two ten minutes alone,” Alfred said in Bruce’s ear and as the line popped dead, Bruce grimaced against the side of Clark’s neck just for a second before he bit down there lightly. He sucked there for a second, and Clark took a sharp breath. Clark’s grip on his jacket tightened. 

“What are you doing, Mr. Wayne?” he asked.

“I’d say that’s obvious,” Bruce replied.

“Are you trying to tell me this is why you came down here?”

“Are you trying to tell me it’s _not_ why you came down here?”

Bruce knew Clark hadn’t gone down there for that. Bruce now knows Clark knew Bruce hadn’t gone down there for that, either, because he'd been listening in on his conversation with Alfred. Bruce knows they could’ve stopped and laughed it off as Bruce Wayne’s drunk-ass sense of humor or ten or twenty other things to get out of there without doing anything else, he knows Clark could have turned around and stormed out and that wouldn't have been out of place or unexpected, but Bruce slipped his hands in under Clark’s jacket instead. A muscle in Clark's jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth and drew an unsteady breath, when Bruce's hands skimmed his chest over his shirt, skimmed his abdomen, caught at his belt, and Clark _didn’t_ say it wasn’t why he’d followed him, though even right then they both knew it wasn’t. They were just pretending it was.

Clark didn’t object when Bruce reached up and took off his thick-rimmed glasses, folded them and slid them neatly into his own jacket pocket. Clark didn’t object when Bruce leaned up against him, when he pressed against him chest to thigh with Clark's glasses between them, when he nipped at Clark’s jaw with his teeth then at his neck over his pulse. He didn’t object when one of Bruce’s hands pushed down over the front of his cheap pants, the suit not exactly Armani, not a great fit, not showing him off to his best advantage though Bruce knows that's at least partially the point of the way Clark dresses. Clark flinched, but only for a second, like a second was all it took to make up his mind, and then Clark kissed Bruce just the same way Bruce had kissed Clark, one hand sweeping up to the back of his neck, one hand pressing tight to the small of his back. For a second, Bruce was actually surprised. _Again_. He was surprised by how much it turned out he wanted it himself. He was so surprised he forgot to tack on his smile.

“I’d like to fuck you right here,” he murmured in Clark’s ear when the kiss broke, low and almost ragged, and felt Clark’s cock give a twitch of interest there beneath his hand, maybe because it was clear how much he meant it. He'd meant it to sound teasing; it sounded torn and fucking desperate. “Would you like that, Mr. Kent?”

Clark paused with a hitch in his breath, then his hands drifted down, not quite unsure, to the curve of Bruce’s ass. He squeezed. He swallowed, his throat working, Bruce's eyes on it. “Yes,” he said, rough and low, his voice catching in his throat like it was an effort to speak, like he was thrown by the fact he meant it, too. He nodded tightly. “ _Yes_.”

And for a moment, Bruce actually contemplated it. He thought about pushing Clark up face-first against the side of the glass cabinet because he was pretty sure he would've let him do it. He thought about getting one hand to Clark's mouth to keep him quiet and the other to his belt, to the zipper of his pants, grazing the nape of his neck with his teeth above the collar of his shirt as he rubbed with the heel of his hand. He thought about rocking his hips up against him, rubbing against him till they were both hard inside their clothes. He thought about unbuckling Clark’s belt and pushing his pants down over his hips, thought about how hot his skin would feel in the air-conditioned server room, how he’d be all goosebumps in seconds except now he knows that never happens where Clark’s concerned, at least not from the cold, maybe sometimes from other things instead. 

He thought about the tube of lip balm he was carrying around in his jacket pocket because putting it on mid-conversation, offhand, made Bruce Wayne look just that much more of an asshole and sometimes circumstances required that, and places he could apply it to in slow circles with the pad of his thumb while Clark's muscles pulled taut. He thought about Clark’s breath fogging the glass with his hitching breath as he pushed into him, as he braced himself against the panel, how his sweat-slicked palms would slip against it. Maybe he even had a condom in his wallet, or maybe Clark did. These days, that wouldn't really matter either way.

It was a terrible place for it and that was, Bruce thought and Bruce still thinks, the only reason they didn’t take it further, why they didn’t do it in Lex’s server room and to hell with any consequences. Bruce had a reputation and rumors of screwing around while drunk off his ass with a burly reporter at some dull Lexcorp event wouldn’t’ve done that reputation much real harm at all, considering everything else the tell-all tales in the gossip pages had accused him of over the years. He thinks he might even have wanted to do it and to hell with the case for the night, to hell with Lex and Superman and Gotham and the Bat just for _one night_ , for once, though that’s likely just Bruce Wayne, Playboy, and his standard-issue melodrama, bleeding through. 

“I’m sorry to say I’m due back in Gotham,” Bruce said, and he pulled back, half-hard, half-breathless. He took a breath then, smiled a faltering self-satisfied smile as he stepped back and fixed his tie, as he patted down his hair, flustered but he couldn't let it show. “If you ever find your way over there, look me up. I’m not hard to find.”

Then he turned and he left. Clark didn’t follow, but by God he wished he would. He still had Clark’s glasses in his jacket's inside pocket as he walked away, still had Clark's inhuman heat in his skin, and Alfred wasn't laughing. And when he brought himself off in the shower the next morning, in the early hours, his eyes squeezed shut so tight it almost hurt, he wasn't sure if what he had in his head was Clark Kent or Superman; these days, he knows it was both.

When he looks back at how they met that night, it’s kind of absurd in a way no one could find amusing except him, even if he could tell them. He wanted to go up against Superman. He wanted a way to bring Superman down, that was why he was there, and all along there Clark was, in his small-town suit with red-flushed cheeks and a very human reaction to an unplanned kiss. He’d wanted to kill Superman, not kiss him. He’d wanted to fuck him up, not just fuck him. And, months later, after Clark’s death and his unlikely resurrection, there they were again, another event, Gotham this time, this time for charity, black ties, tuxedos, thousand-dollar plates of ten-dollar food. There they were, after months of knowing exactly what had happened that night, and who exactly it had happened with. 

“Mr. Kent,” Bruce said, when they came face to face, and held out one hand for him to shake. 

“It's Clark, Mr. Wayne,” Clark said, and shook it. 

“Bruce.” 

Clark nodded. “Bruce.” 

Clark smiled faintly and Bruce returned it, just as faintly. For once, that smile felt genuine. And all evening, throughout, they caught each other’s gaze across the room, table to table, and then looked away. And all evening, Bruce didn’t quite let himself be thrilled to know he wasn’t the only one there who had a secret. He wasn’t the only one who knew his own, because Clark knew it just like he knew Clark's. It shouldn’t have mattered. It did. 

They could have sneaked away, Bruce thinks, and it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed they were both missing from the room. They could have found a dark corner and pushed against each other while they kissed, mouths crushed together, fingers in hair, in clothes, maybe in each other. Bruce could’ve gone down on his knees in his overpriced suit, scuffed his thousand-dollar shoes on a service corridor floor, sucked Clark’s cock because he’d wondered, in the back of his head, if he’d taste the same as a human did. He does. But he didn’t find out that night. 

They could have sneaked away, Bruce thinks, but they didn’t. They shook hands before they left and they left apart; it wasn’t until later, until just past 2am, until the roof of the hotel where they’d eaten their charity dinner, that they met again. 

“I think these are yours,” Bruce said, as Clark touched down on the rooftop, cape flapping in the breeze around his calves. Bruce held out the glasses he’d taken that first night in one gloved, gauntleted hand.

“Well, I didn’t really need them where I’ve been,” Clark replied, with a wry twist to his mouth, though he took them. Clark doesn't need gloves. Clark's hands are perfect, hot, big, solid, and you'd never know he'd worked on a farm a single day in his life. Bruce's don't look like a billionaire's. “But thank you.” 

For a minute or two or five, they stood together at the edge of the roof, side by side, looking out, looking down. Then Bruce fired out a line and when he jumped, Clark flew with him, no wires, no art to it, just biology. Later, back in the cave and then Bruce’s house above it, _that_ was when it finally happened, when they stripped each other down, out of their costumes, Clark’s perfect skin against Bruce’s scars that sometimes Clark stares at like he thinks maybe he can mend them if he wants it hard enough. 

Without the cape, with his feet on the ground, Clark looks just like a man. Without his own cape, Bruce feels like he might even be one, too. In Bruce’s bed, their hands on each other, Krypton might as well be as close by as Metropolis. Metropolis might as well be Gotham. Bruce's bed might as well be Clark's. Sometimes Bruce thinks they'll stop pretending it's not.

Clark says he hates the social beat, all the events, the parties, the charity functions, the good suit Bruce sent him that fits him in every dimension though he’s never asked exactly how Bruce got his measurements, waiting at the finish line for the charity car races, waiting at the hangar for the charity skydives. He says he’d like to be a hard-nosed, hard-boiled reporter, on the big stories, getting the scoops, but that’s more for Lois than it is for him; he _makes_ the news, he doesn’t need to report it too. He already makes a difference. 

Clark says he hates the social columns but there he is again tonight, in his lone tuxedo though his life consists of press passes to parties and one glass of champagne that he always nurses till the bitter end just to keep up appearances. It’s the Metropolis Arts Center and Bruce is there because he knows it bothers Clark just as much as he’s there for his current investigation, and he shoots Clark a wink across the room. Clark hides his smile behind his hand as he listens to what the congressman he’s chatting with has to say, and Bruce turns back to his date. She’s pretty and intelligent, but his interest is thirty feet away talking politics like that’ll get him into a real story. Sometimes it does, but maybe not tonight. 

Later, they’ll meet. Clark’s not hard to find if you know where to look and Clark’s address is even in the phone book, so Bruce will go over to his place, knock, let himself in if he’s not there because picking the lock on Clark’s front door is second nature to him now, these days. Clark will come back, through the door and not the window, in a suit and not his bright red cape, smelling of smoke or gasoline or blood or something else entirely and Bruce knows all the smells because he’s seen it all himself too many times to count. Clark won’t even try to act surprised he’s there. He won’t pretend he’s not pleased he's there. They’ll have an hour or so before Bruce needs to leave, to get back to Gotham, and they’ll make the most of it. 

Looking back, it’s funny, the things they did to hide themselves from one another, how Bruce wanted him at the same time he wanted him dead. Clark doesn’t see the funny side but when he says so Bruce covers his mouth with his hand like Clark couldn’t snap his wrist with a flick of his own. Sometimes he hurts him, but it’s never on purpose. Sometimes it’s like he just forgets Bruce isn’t just like him. They're more alike than not.

It’s funny how things turn out, Bruce thinks, as he watches Clark across the room. It’s funny how the alien he thought he hated turned out to save his life. It’s funny he came back with no hard feelings. It’s funny how capes on a rooftop feel more natural than suits inside a server room. It’s funny how Superman now gives him all the hope he’d thought he’d lost and somewhere, between identities, between capes and suits and everything they show to people that they meet, there’s a point where Bruce and Clark meet, not Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, not Batman and Superman, nothing anyone could Google. Just Bruce and Clark.

Later, they’ll screw in Clark’s bed, face to face and eye to eye, Bruce’s legs cinched in tight around Clark’s waist, Bruce’s hands pulled tight at Clark’s biceps. Bruce Wayne would say something flippant after, tease him, make him frown, but Bruce won’t. He'll let Clark trace his scars with his hands instead, trace them with his lips on his skin, the old ones and the ones Clark helped stitch up. He learned on him because Bruce was already so littered with scars he didn’t mind. His technique’s gotten better. These days, it barely even hurts. 

They’ll screw in Clark’s bed and Bruce will tell himself it’s funny, he'll tell himself it's just as absurd as the first night they met. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll call it fate.

Bruce doesn’t believe in fate, and when it comes down to it, neither does Clark. Clark believes in truth and trust and doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do. And, beneath it all, under the playboy and the vigilante, under silk suits and scars, Bruce believes in Clark.


End file.
